Fight to protect the world’s most threatened great ape goes to court

Demonstrators from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) hold a banner protesting China’s funding in the Batang Toru dam in front of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo by Hans Nicholas Jong for Mongabay.

Fight to protect the world’s most threatened great ape goes to court

by Hans Nicholas Jong on 21 August 2018

Indonesia’s leading environmental watchdog has filed a lawsuit to block a project to build a dam and hydroelectric power plant in the Sumatran habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, the world’s newest known and most endangered great ape.

The lawsuit claims a series of administrative oversights in the project’s environmental impact permit, as well as a breach of zoning laws by building along a known tectonic fault line.

An online petition has also taken off, with more than 1.3 million people signing to call on President Joko Widodo to scrap the project.

Opposition to the project has also drawn the attention of top scientists from around the world, who last month signed an open letter to the president to press their case for the habitat to be preserved.